The men who killed New York

If you had to think of one city on earth where the rulers should not try to impose a standard of ‘good behaviour’, it would surely be New York. Who in their right mind would seek to sanitise this concrete jungle, to sedate the city that never sleeps, to demand conformism and obedience from the inhabitants of a place which, in the words of a popular tourist T-shirt, is known as ‘New York F**kin’ City’?

You’d be surprised. New York is currently governed by a gaggle of health-obsessed bigwigs who believe they have a duty to grab New Yorkers by the scruffs of their outsized necks and drag them towards lives of bicycle-riding, non-smoking, booze-avoiding, fruit-snacking conformity. City Hall, under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is awash with that new breed of psycho-politician known as the ‘nudger’, who believes that he has the right to use psychological techniques and brute censorship to manipulate and ‘improve’ human behaviour.

The Bloombergers have become world-beaters in the banning of public smoking and the demonisation of junk food. It is testament to their successful colonisation of these islands that the banning of smoking in all public parks, pedestrian plazas and beaches passed without incident, and even without much angry commentary, on 24 May. Under the Smoke Free Air Act (it is clever, in an Orwellian kind of way, to use the word ‘free’ in an act of law that diminishes freedom), New Yorkers can no longer light up in Central Park, Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Promenade, the Coney Island concrete walk or even Times Square, that flashing, noisy advertisers’ paradise where you can still watch naked cowboys play guitar and buy Sarah Palin condoms from streetsellers — so long as you don’t puff on a ciggie at the same time. ‘Where can I smoke now?’ one New Yorker said to a newspaper. ‘In an underground fortress of shame?’

In 2003, NYC became one of the first cities in the western world to outlaw the evil weed in bars, restaurants, workplaces and theatres. But the outdoor smoking ban is of a different, more jaw-dropping order. It gives the lie to the idea that bans on public smoking are driven by a good-hearted instinct to protect non-smokers from second-hand smoke. (How could that possibly be a problem in a space as vast and airy as Central Park?) Rather it exposes the Bloombergers’ desire to monitor more closely what people ingest, not only at work or on the bus, but now in Central Park too, a place that was originally designed, in the words of David M. Scobey’s book Empire City, to ‘enhance the experience of freedom’ and allow New Yorkers to ‘lose themselves’. The outdoor smoking ban has stubbed out something of the spirit of New York. As one smoker who was reprimanded by the NYPD for daring to light up in Union Square on the day ‘Smoke Freedom’ was enforced, put it, ‘New York is kind of lame now.’

Not content with policing what New Yorkers puff, the Bloombergers want to control what they scoff, too. City Hall banned the frying of food in transfats in all restaurants in 2007, which was bad news for those of us for whom half the attraction of visiting NYC was to tuck into the deliciously unhealthy fare served up in its diners. And in 2008, the city forced all chain restaurants and foodsellers to publish the calorific information of their food, in the same-sized font as the label for the food itself. Walking down Fifth Avenue, I saw a huge poster in a Burger King window advertising two burgers for the price of one, alongside an equally huge notice saying: ‘1320 CALORIES.’ Even the temporary stalls that hawk hot dogs and ice-cream in Central Park and elsewhere display calorific facts. That salted pretzel you buy as you stroll back to your hotel (‘500 CALORIES’) now comes with a side order of inner turmoil and gym fantasies.

It is hard to convey the impact of this state-enforced calorie-counting. It effortlessly zaps the fun from eating out. It is designed to induce caution, even guilt, in New Yorkers, to make them stop and think before snacking or dining, to make them treat calorific consumption as something akin to snorting cocaine — an act that can have grave consequences. As a regular TGI Friday’s patron told a reporter when the display law was introduced, after she noticed that the Brownie Obsession dessert had ‘1,500 CALORIES’: ‘I’m so upset. I wish they wouldn’t have done this.’

Some restaurant chains tried to assert their First Amendment rights in opposition to the calorie law, arguing that they were effectively being forced to publish a government message. They’re right, and the government message was this: ‘Do you really want this muffin? It will make you even wobblier than you already are. Go home and snack on lentil seeds instead.’ But the restaurant rebels lost and now you can’t go anywhere in NYC without having your brain invaded by gut-busting food facts.

The lowest blow in City Hall’s war on wicked food is its recurring efforts to ban the buying of fizzy pop with food stamps. In an initiative that could easily be titled ‘No Coke for poor black folk’, the Bloombergers have sought federal permission to prevent welfare recipients from using government cash to purchase fizzy drinks. The killjoyism of this campaign, the Scrooge-infused miserabilism of it, is astounding. City Hall has launched an advertising campaign demonising sugary drinks as one of the great evils of our time, and its internal email correspondence about the campaign, which was leaked to the New York Times, shines a rather harsh light on the evidence-lite nastiness of the modern-day nudge-and-nanny industry. Scientific advisers emailed Thomas Farley, Bloomberg’s overactive health adviser, to say that the ad’s claim that drinking pop can make you gain 10 or 15 pounds is ‘simplistic’ and ‘exaggerated’. Overriding them, Farley responded: ‘I think what people fear is getting fat, so we need some statement about what is bad about consuming so many calories.’ Who needs evidence when you have fear? The ad shows human fat gurgling from the top of a can of soda. One City Hall employee could barely conceal his excitement: it is ‘deliciously disgusting’, he said in one of the emails that was leaked.

‘Deliciously disgusting’ — that just about sums up how New York’s new rulers view the huddled masses of this extravagant city. In a complete reversal of the traditional democratic relationship, Bloomberg and co don’t consider it their duty to mirror the desires and outlook of those who elected them. They want to remake New Yorkers as models of what they consider to be healthy citizenship. Much of this stuff comes from Thomas Farley, who is championed by both Bloomberg and the liberal media as an admirably thin jogging aficionado who believes in the power of the nudge to remould the citizenry. He is a ‘superman’, the New York Times recently gushed, who has ‘grasshopper-like legs’ (eurgh), a result of the fact that ‘he exercises seven days a week, loves his vegetables and has never smoked a cigarette’ (boring). This fanboy fluff piece was illustrated with a picture of Farley leading a workout of not-so-thin black New Yorkers, his grasshopper-like legs just as sure a sign of his superiority as his white skin would have been 100 years ago.

Farley openly boasts about his ‘behaviourist message’, as originally outlined in his 2005 book Prescription for a Healthy Nation: A New Approach to Improving Our Lives by Fixing Our Everyday World, which had chapters titled ‘Humans behaving badly’ and ‘Curve-shifting people’s behaviour’. ‘People aren’
t logical’, Farley wrote, because there are ‘so many aspects of our environment that encourage risky behaviour’. That such a man, alongside Bloomberg, now governs a city as great and as loud and as rowdy as New York is terrifying. To paraphrase Sinatra, if the nudgers can make it here, they can make it anywhere.

This article first appeared in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated June 4, 2011

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Jean

I grew up in New York and I remember that you had to be really tough to survive. In fact, when by brother was asked where he was born, he answered, “I did 18 years in New York.” Of course, that was New York’s charm also.

Today, New York’s population are really nice, pleasant people, and the toughness is gone. Why, you ask? I think one of the reasons is that most people living in New York aren’t really New Yorkers. They immigrated to the city. Real New Yorkers would never agree to all these rules.

ccook

It seems you are blaming a national movement on Bloomberg. I for one embrace his improvements in spite of the fact he’s a Republican who are usually the ones pushing control. While he is trying to control behavior which is invasive, offensive and actually proven to be damaging to our health as well as behavior which harms the health of impoverished children and cost the taxpayers more, there are others who wish to control who we love and what we do or don’t want to do with our bodies. It seems like the latter issues are far more limiting to our freedoms that the ones you’ve mentioned.In my book, I would much rather live under a Bloomberg regime than one of almost any other right wing politician.__a happy New yorker

JimboK

The suggestion by the almost perversely happy NY’er commentator that Bloomberg is a right-winger is farcical on its face. He is a RINO. Really the GOP has only itself to blame. They are so desperate that they allow liberals, and even as in Bloomberg, radical liberals with lotsa moolah run on the GOP ticket ‘cos the big B can’t win the Dem ticket for competition from his fellow lefties better integrated in the Dem machine. But this craven ideological capitulation trashes the Republican brand. Have these turkeys no insight? How can you expect to win the public when you intentionally confuse the public? It’s just short term personal power politics. Its not the politics of policy or ideological alternatives

Joe

Where I’m from, we have a name for what the people of New York have become: pussies.

TexasMom

The problem is this crap starts spreading across the country as these libs move here and try to recreate their liberal utopia. I would be fine if they would stay in the cesspool that liberal politics create but they do not. Look at all the cities that have been run by liberals over the last 50 years… Like New York, Chicago, Los Angelos, Detroit, on and on… All cesspools of human misery from which people flee… Right to conservative states like mine. They are welcome up to the time when they start pushing liberal utopian garbage on us.

I don’t wish to live under a nanny state, it is bad enough living under the federal nanny government.

Chuck

To Jean: Sadly, real New Yorkers indeed do agree. It’s what’s happened to New York.

As a New Yorker, the smoking ban in clubs and bars was the best thing that ever happened. I could actually go out and enjoy myself, and not come home smelling like a hog’s ass.

Recall one of our Supreme Court Justices; “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes. Same for smoking. I don’t care that you smoke – I care that you make me smoke it (second hand), and smell it, and Febreeze my coats before putting them back in my closet.

Where New York’s Nanny-in-Chief went wrong was when he started trying to ban things that were purely pesonal, like salt consumption or smoking in your own apartment. That is anti-freedom indeed.

Basil Duke

Republicans are the control freak party???!!! You jest, surely. The modern Democratic party has “control” in its DNA – whether it’s braying for “hate speech” codes, the abolition of fur, the seizure of firearms, taste-free diets, toilets that use so little water that they don’t actually flush, and on and on. In short: you want to control how we go potty, what we eat, what we wear, what we say and how we defend our very lives. “Progressives” fear freedom and free-thinking citizenry. The Republicans lack guts and brains, but at least they’re not fascists. Bloomberg may have an “R” after his name, but he’s a prototypical liberal if I ever smelled one.

Robert Spencer

So let me get this strait… you are crying in your beer because the Nanny state you voted for and supported is turning you all into coddled little dogs? Sleep in your bed and like it. This is what happens when you vote for a soft tyranny, and it could not have happened to a more deserving people. Now stay the hell out of my state, I don’t want you trying to come here fleeing the train wreck you created and bringing your tragically stupid voting habits with you.

Puhleeze

If you wish to smoke you can smoke all you want. Just not where children and non-smokers are also breathing. Seems fair to me unless you like cancer. And where do you put your butts when you’re finished smoking in Central Park? In your pocket? Not likely. Smoking is a filthy, addictive, cancer inducing habit. There’s nothing “free” about it. Just quit, like I did (after 25 years). It will all make sense. Is NYC becoming too sterile? Maybe, but I can still find great food everywhere that doesn’t show the caloric intake anywhere on the menu. I can also find plenty of places to eat and drink whatever I want while toking on a hookah if I so choose. This knee-jerk attitude against promoting public health is moronic and unfounded. It’s your body and you can do to it whatever you want to in New York or any other state. When I see London make efforts to control it’s coal burning emissions, alcoholism and cancer rates, I’ll be sure to write an article condemning it if that makes you feel better.

Brian Gulino

Some conservatives idea of being a freedom loving tough guy is to focus on the freedom to get fat and smoke without having to confront the health consequences of either action. You like freedom so much, you might want to look again at the TSA or the military, for some examples of your rights being taken away.

syn

“in spite of the fact he’s a Republican who are usually the ones pushing control.”

Mike Bloomberg was a lifelong registered Democrat who switched parties in 2001 because there were too many Democrats running for from him to get noticed. Then he switched to Independent when the heat came against all things Republican Then after he changed term limit laws to give him the ability to run a third term he switched back to Republican because there was no Independent Party for him to run.

Bloomberg is the same Progressive Collectivist Billionaire Nanny-Bully as all the other Progressive Collectivist Billionaire (Buffet, Soros, Gates, Winfrey, Kennedys et al) Nanny-Bullies.

I escaped NYC end of Dec 2010;why should I provide the tax dollars to a bunch of whiny Progressive Billionaire Nanny-Bullies who dictate their hyper-paranoid hypochondria upon the lives of others?

All who choose to remain in NYC are silly, hapless Serfs for the Empire of Weinerville.

Don Rodrigo

New York is not supposed to be Singapore, but Bloomberg and his predecessor — Giuliani — are tone deaf to that.

This is not the first time that neurotic/obsessives have hijacked public policy. They had a much bigger coup with Prohibition. THAT worked out well, didn’t it?

Kendra

Bloomberg is an idiot. Although he ran on the Republican ticket, he has less in common the Giuliani and more with Obama. Typical boomer lib/mentality despite the run with LSD and coke, smoking cigs and drinking beer is bad. His smoking ban has killed the bar business, shown tourists the way to Disney world, and with such worries has cost the City in law suits; the courts are yet as corrupt as all hell/Chicago; New York’s taxes are highest in the country; housing the highest; but, the fountains work and we cannot smoke or eat unhealthy foods. Yeah, I heart NY — not. Jersey, anyone?

chuck

Nonsense. New York is full of the most docile voters in the world. Whatever the Democrat Machine tells them to do, they do. They are not used to acting as free men, and have tolerated for decades a lower level of freedom than everywhere else in the US. Bloomberg is just pushing much harder. I pity these poor tramps, paying $8 for a pack of cigarettes. The government torments them.

Gordon Walker

As a retired English state school teacher I am surprised that advice from a state organisation is treated with anything other than total contempt. Is there anyone in this fallen world who actually thinks that secondary smoke in Central Park could have any bad effects, when the infamous study on couples failed to pass the standard statistical tests?The only possible use of this alarmist propaganda is to identify the officials who produce this nonsense and to sack them and anyone who comes within an heirarchical lightyear. I had better shut up now because I can feel a Ward Churchill moment coming on!

AtheistConservative

The fundamental problem with all of this is that, as we are a society run entirely by special-interest groups, this type of tyranny is our future no matter how much the intelligent and aware object to it. Because all the tyrant has to do is give you enough toys and trinkets to distract you while they take more and more control of your life. And, eventually, you’re past the tipping point.

Ex New Yorker

Some of you are under the mistaken belief that Bloomberg is a Republician. He is not. He is a lifelong liberal Democrat who switched his party affiliation long enough to buy the Republican spot on the ballot for his first term. He could not have won as a Democrat because of the intense competition from long-established politicians.

He renounced his temporary Republican identity shortly after the election and is now a registered independent.

Biggestaspidistra

The new cycle lanes are the biggest act of idiocy of Bloomberg’s reign. Unused except for an occasional cyclist travelling in the wrong direction, cars now forced to park one lane in and step out into moving traffic. The new ‘plazas’, a few plants stuck between the busy traffic lanes, are as foolish and part of his longterm aim to turn Manhattan into Minneapolis.

The warning signs of Bloomberg’s dictatorial nature were long evident: his actions during the republican convention; towards the Occupy movement; the altering of term limits. And with barely a squeak of protest whilst the money flowed. Oops, it’s stopped.